relate directly to these two notes. One of them is circled, the other is marked by Lenin. On "Yugostali" see also Lenin, Works, Vol. XXVII, p. 514, note 53.

943в

TELEPHONE MESSAGE TO THE MOSCOW PROVINCIAL DEPARTMENT OF METALWORKERS*.

Moscow Provincial Department of the All-Russian Union of Metalworkers.
[November 3, 1921]

I request that you send to the Council of Labor and Defense data on the actual supply of metal-processing plants for the past month, available to the provincial department, for familiarization.

Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense

9586

MEMORANDUM TO I. I. MEZHLАUK\

Mezhlаuk*.

A copy to be sent to Comrade Gorbunov.

December 9, 1921

Comrade Mezhlаuk, I shall instruct the administrative department of the Council of Labor and Defense to verify the fulfillment of what was promised to you. The results of the verification will be communicated to you by letter or when you come to the Congress. I am concerned lest you fall into some excess, especially as regards excessively high rates for individual persons. Inform me of the extent to which your enthusiasms reach in this regard, and perhaps in some other respects as well.

Lenin.

1 I. I. Mezhlаuk — chairman of the board of Yugostali.

*Printed from a typewritten copy. Ed.

## THE AUTONOMOUS INDUSTRIAL COLONY KUZBAS

In the second half of 1921, a group of American workers and engineers headed by W. D. Haywood and the Dutch communist S. J. Rutgers began negotiations with the Soviet government concerning the transfer to them for exploitation of a section of the Kuznetsk coal basin in Siberia. During that period, among foreign workers a spontaneous movement began to provide assistance to Soviet Russia in the restoration of its industry destroyed by war and intervention.

Negotiations with the group of Rutgers and Haywood concluded with the conclusion of a contract with them on November 26, 1921, after which in 1922 the so-called "Autonomous Industrial Colony Kuzbas" (AIK Kuzbas) was created. The colony of American workers in Kuzbas existed with the rights of a state enterprise directly subordinate to the Council of Labor and Defense. The organization included workers who had arrived from America, England, and other countries.

"AIK-Kuzbas" received under its management a group of enterprises in the Kemerovo district, to which was attached the Nadezhdinskii plant in the Urals, later — the Prokopievsk mines and an old metallurgical plant in Gur'evsk, as well as a state farm covering an area of 40,000 hectares, thereby creating a large economically self-contained enterprise. In the contract on the part of the Soviet government only one monetary sum of 300,000 dollars was stipulated, intended for the purchase of major machines abroad. The main source of means for organizing the enterprise was to be the workers' own funds from the colony, which they contributed in kind (foodstuffs, tools, small machines, instruments). The system of payment for labor existing at the beginning — payment in kind, without distinction of qualifications, could not, however, sufficiently contribute to the fulfillment of one of the basic conditions of the contract — the highest labor productivity and discipline exceeding the capitalist norm.

Therefore in 1923, the contract with "AIK-Kuzbas" was modified, and deliveries in kind and wages were replaced by monetary settlements. This led to the fact that part of the workers of the colony, with unresolved syndicalist sentiments, left Kuzbas.

All the enumerated peculiarities of the organization of "AIK-Kuzbas" — the autonomy of the colony with the attraction of the means of the workers themselves